THE REALM OF LIGHT
To die, to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream;
for in that sleep of death what dreams may come
must give us pause.
(‘Hamlet’, Shakespeare)
Medical death
In 1981 50 states of the United States adopted the Uniform Determination of Death Act. This stated that’an individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead.’
Is that the end of the story?
Spirit visible
So what really happens when we die? There are some clues.
In the 1920’s Sir William Fletcher Barrett FRS wrote a book, published posthumously, called Death-Bed Visions. In it are the words of a church dean; while he and his wife were present at the deathbed of their son, they both noticed ‘something rise as if it were from his face like a delicate veil or mist, and slowly pass away… We were deeply impressed and remarked, “How wonderful! Surely that must be the departure of his spirit.””
In the book ‘At Heaven’s Door’, a woman Stephanie who had accompanied her husband to ‘the other side’ three day before he died, finally told his oncologist. ‘He hesitated and then he got up, and he went over and closed his door. He came back and he sat down and he said, “I will never share this with anyone else, but I will tell you. When I was an intern, and I was doing my ER rotation, we lost someone one day. I actually saw their body rise, the form lift out of his body.”’
Peter, a neighbour of mine, told me of his experience as a small boy of eight. He was eating grapes and happened to throw one onto the bars of an electric fire. He thought he had harmed it and seized one of the bars. It was painful, he thought he had given himself an electric shock and screamed inwardly. “Suddenly I found himself in a rather quiet peaceful place. I remember the sense of looking down on this child in pain, and knowing it was me. I didn’t feel any pain, and looked down in a rather detached way. When I came back to myself, I was not in pain, but I recall smelling the burning on my hand so I knew what had happened.”
Near Death Experiences (NDEs)
In 1975 the American psychiatrist Raymond A Moody published ‘Life after Life’ in which he coined the term ‘near-death experience’. In it he told of those who were clinically dead for a short time and who had revived. They had had remarkably similar experiences: being out of one’s body, the sensation of traveling through a tunnel, meeting dead relatives, and encountering a bright light. The book sold 14 million copies.
I have known two people with that experience. One was a lady in Beddington Corner who had gone through windshield of her car. The other, in Kingston-upon-Thames, had been a soldier in the Second World War and was caught in a shell-burst. His first reaction to the comrade who saved his life was of irritation; being on the other side was much more pleasant.
A Scientific Approach
In June 2020 Scientific American published a sympathetic but sceptical article by Christof Koch entitled ‘Tales of the Dying Brain’, or ‘What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about the Brain’.
‘Thousands of survivors of traumatic episodes tell of leaving their damaged bodies behind and encountering a realm beyond everyday existence. These experiences can lead to permanent transformation of their lives. Most memories fade over time, but people continue to recall NDEs with unusual intensity.
‘A young Ernest Hemingway, badly injured by an exploding shell on a World War I battlefield, wrote in a letter home that “dying is a very simple thing. I’ve looked at death, and really I know. If I should have died it would have been very easy for me. Quite the easiest thing I ever did.”’
Another Culture – Hinduism
Early in the article the author remarks that ‘These experiences have been with us at all times and in all cultures.’ The most ancient traditions of what happens after death come from India. Here is how the Encyclopedia Britannia describes the Hindu view of the process of death.
‘The Hindu concept of the soul is central to an understanding of most Hindu practices related to death. ‘Immediately after death, the soul is not clothed in a physical body but in a vaporous thumb-sized structure (‘linga ṡarīra’). This is immediately seized by two servants of Yama, the god of death, who carry it to their master for a preliminary identity check. Afterward, the soul is promptly returned to the abode of the deceased, where it hovers around the doorstep. It is important that the cremation be completed by the time of the soul’s return, to prevent it from re-entering the body…. (Various ritual are held to create a new body for the soul)…. The soul of the deceased then leaves this world for its yearlong and perilous journey to Yama’s kingdom. If the rituals had not been performed, the ‘preta’ (soul) could become a malignant spirit, repeatedly turning up to frighten the living. For the deceased, things would be worse: the ‘preta’ would be left wandering. (A similar fate befalls the soul of a person who commits suicide.)’
‘After a year, the soul in its more substantial physical body, reaches Yama’s seat of judgment, where it is sentenced to a strictly limited term in heaven or hell according to its deserts. This completed, it moves into another body, whose form depends on the individual’s ‘karman’. It could be a plant, a cockroach, a canine intestinal parasite, a mouse, or a human being.’
Distressing NDEs
Though most NDEs are positive, some bring distress. Feelings can include loss of control, or sadness, of empty space or occasionally hell. A clinical social worker observed, “All the people I know who have had negative spiritual experiences have become Bible-based Christians.” (Missouri Medicine Nov-Dec 2014)
Apparently A J Ayer, the eminent atheist philosopher (esp.’Language, Truth and Logic) had a NDE. It was rather horrible, everything was red. Since then ha has believed in life after death, but not in God – surely the worst of all worlds.
Neurology
The Scientific American article goes on:‘The underlying neurological sequence of events in a near-death experience is difficult to determine with any precision because of the dizzying variety of way in which the brain can be damaged… Like a town that loses power one neighbourhood at a time, local regions of the brain go offline one after another. The mind … does what it always does: it tells a story shaped by the person’s experience, memory and cultural expectations.’
‘Neurosurgeons are able to induce … ecstatic feelings by electrically stimulating parts of the cortex called the insula … This brute link between abnormal activity patterns … and subjective experience provides support for a biological, not spiritual origin. The same is likely to be true for NDEs.’ (My emphasis)
Shared Death Experience (SDE)
A damaged brain of a dying person may be a sufficient though not necessary explanation of NDE’s. But what if the brain is not damaged? What if the NDE is in fact witnessed by a living person, whose brain is undamaged?
The following three stories come from ‘At Heaven’s Door’, a collection of Shared Death Experiences (SDEs) written in 2021 by William J Peters, an end-of-life therapist. They are accounts of people, mostly women, who have consciously been with someone as they transitioned through death.
1. Cristina was a home health aide in Pittsburgh. When she was five, her mother had a brain tumour. Cristina and her mum became and remained incredibly close. In 2016 the mother suffered a stroke and never regained consciousness. She held her mum after they stopped the life support.
‘The last thing I said to her was “Mommy, it’s OK. I’m here. God’s here.” Right when I said that, that’s when I felt light. I felt like the whole room was weightless and I was weightless … I saw her go towards this bright light. I didn’t see her face, but I knew it was her. It was the best feeling in the whole world. I have never been so happy in my life. The peace I felt was just incredible…’
She has been hesitant to talk about it. Her mother’s doctor told her, “It was probably just a reflex.” (p53-56)
2. A more difficult story was told by Jeanne, who had worked in hospice care. In his late eighties her father, a matter-of-fact man, after heart surgery had a frightening near-death experience. “I thought I had died, it was all black … and nobody was there.”
Jeanne’s father went into a decline on Sunday when Jeanne was in New York She booked a flight on Tuesday but he died on Monday night, just when Jeanne felt a strong urge to call him. On the early morning flight she finally had a moment to meditate.
‘That’s when I saw Dad. It was a young face, him as a young man. His face felt like it was right up close next to mine, and he was terrified.’ Startled, she opened her eyes… After going to the bathroom she closed her eyes again. ‘There was nothing except blackness, and him and me, and the terror he was in. It seemed just like how he had described his NDE, except that I could see a point of light behind him. I could see it, but he couldn’t.
‘I realised that he had to get to the light, but I just couldn’t get him to turn around so he could see it…. I thought, ‘Well, I’m his daughter, he’s not listening to me, but if we had a little party here, they can help him.’ Jeanne began to concentrate on summoning a welcoming party. As she saw her father join the gathering and reorientate himself towards the light ‘I put myself back in the picture, and I was walking with him and talking with I’m. He’s now joyous, and I’m joyous that he’s joyous…. Of course now the light’s getting larger and larger, and we’re walking as this love opens, and we connect. It didn’t take long before we were at a round opening with lights streaming out of it… and there were people peering through. It was his aunt Bernice, his sister, his parents.’ (p. 84-86)
3. Stephanie’s husband was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1999. In the end the hospital admitted him to a hospice room in the hospital and he slipped into a coma. Stephanie did not leave his side. Eventually Stephanie was so exhausted she put her head down. In that moment it was as if ‘we were no longer in that room. We were in that white light, incredibly bright light.’ Neither she nor her husband were in their ‘human shapes’ and she saw ‘two other entities there.’ ‘There was no pain, no hurt.… It was like you understood the universe. It was peaceful.’
Her husband’s shape turned to her along with the two other entities, and they communicated to her: “You cannot continue on. You must go back.” ‘I knew my husband would be okay. In that split second, I came back and I was in my body’.
Although her husband did not die for three more days, Stephanie believes that he had already passed on and gone on ‘to a different dimension.
Stephanie described her husband as being ‘pure energy’. There was no form to him or the other entities, nothing that would identify then as male or female, young or old. ‘He didn’t look like a human being, and yet I knew that it was him.” (p.96-98)
Note how this echoes St Paul’s insight in 1 Corinthians 15:42-44:
‘So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.’
Was Jesus right when he said, “When they rise from the dead, they … are like angels in heaven” ?
Communication
Jane Goodall, the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees, tells that after her dearly loved husband Derek died, he appeared to a 13 year old Downs syndrome girl they were both fond of. The night he died, she woke her nanny up and said “Mary, please wake up. That man has came and he likes me. He is smiling… I don’t remember his name but he comes with Jane and he walks with a stick. And he likes me. He really likes me.” Jane herself wrote, “During the first six months after Derek’s death I often felt his presence… After a while, as though he knew that I was all right, I felt his presence less and less often. I knew it was time for him to move on.” (Reason for Hope p.165, 167)
The most satisfactory example I have come across concerning contact between the dead and the living comes in C S Lewis’ book ‘A Grief Observed’. This is a series of notes that Lewis wrote to keep himself sane after his wife died. During his lifetime they were published under a pseudonym.
‘I said several notebooks ago, that even if I got what seemed like an assurance of H’s presence, I wouldn’t believe it. Easier said than done. Even now, though, I won’t treat anything of that sort as evidence. It’s the quality of last night’s experience – not what it proves but what it was – that makes it worth putting down. It was quite incredibly unemotional. Just the impression of her mind momentarily facing my own. Mind, not ’soul’ as we tend to think of soul. Certainly the reverse of what is called ‘soulful’. Much more like getting a telephone call or a wire from her about some practical arrangement. Not that there was any ‘message’ – just intelligence and attention. No sense of joy or sorrow. No love even, in our ordinary sense. No un-love. I had never in any mood imagined the dead as being so – well, so business-like. Yet there was an extreme and cheerful intimacy… One didn’t need emotion. The intimacy was complete – sharply bracing and restorative too – without it…. A society or common of pure intelligence would not be cold, drab and comfortless… It would, if I have had a glimpse, be – well, I’m almost scared at the adjectives I’d have to use. Brisk? cheerful? keen? alert? intense? wide-awake? Above all, solid. Utterly reliable. Firm. There is no nonsense about the dead.’
(A Grief Observed p. 61-63)
What I think
Forty years ago, while living in the Post Green Community, I had a sharp chest pain at teatime, so sharp I had to go and lie down. I thought, “Maybe I haven’t got as long to live as I thought. But whatever happens, I believe I shall be in the hands of God and that is OK.’ Shortly after I telephoned my brother who is a doctor. On hearing my symptoms he said, “That isn’t a heart attack. It’s indigestion.” However, what the experience taught me is that I genuinely do not fear death.
I believe we have an ultimate destination, which is, in the words of the last line of Dante’s Paradiso: